This will be a HUGE post, with lots of step-by-step instructions and photographs.

Mounting Paper On Cradleboard

You may be wondering why you might want to mount (permanently adhere) paper onto an already paintable surface like a wooden cradleboard (a thin piece of wood, often birch, mounted to a wooden frame to give it stability). After all, why bother going to the extra trouble and time? I can think of several reasons right off the top of my head. While it is absolutely true that you can gesso and then paint on a cradleboard and get great results, you may have already painted and/or collaged a wonderful piece of art onto paper, unstretched artist canvas, or even fabric, and now you need a way to display it. Or, if you're like me, you like the way paint absorbs into paper, want to make art with it regularly, and don't want to be forced to mat and frame the piece for display. Finally, you may simply want the smoother surface with no signs of wood grain that you can only achieve with paper.

Whatever your reason may be, mounting paper onto a cradleboard is easy and quick, and nothing to be intimidated by!

Cut your paper to fit your cradleboard. You can either cut it to the exact measurements, or leave a little hanging off each edge to trim away later. (In my demo, I've cut my paper to the exact size of my cradleboard and used my fingers on each corner to make sure it was well aligned.)

If you want to gesso the cradleboard, this is the time to do it. For this demo, I didn't bother.

Using a paintbrush, apply an even coating of gel medium to the panel. Make sure your brush strokes are random, so that they won't show under the paper after the gel medium has cured. Work quickly before the glue dries. If you're working on a large surface and worry about drying, a light spritzing of water across areas you've just covered with glue will help keep the whole thing moist until you've covered the entire cradleboard.

Align your paper to fit the cradleboard, being sure that all edges of the board are covered with paper.

Using your fingers or a brayer, burnish the paper, starting from the inside and working your way outward to smooth the glue beneath and remove any air pockets.

Cover with parchment paper or other non-stick surface.

Cover with a heavy weight, like books or plywood. For my example, I've used a piece of plywood with two, 8-pound dumbbells.

Have Patience! Allow your cradleboard to dry at least overnight, if not 48 hours before removing the weights. Presto, you now have a paper painting surface on a sturdy frame that will be ready to hang!

Painting In Layers

~What You'll Need:

Acrylic paint and ink in various colors

Paint brushes, texture tools, gel plate, stamps, stencils- anything around the house that will make an impression in paint or help you get paint from a tube to your cradleboard

Baby wipes or damp paper towels

Patience

Imagination

Fearlessness

My mixed-media paintings always have many layers of paint, some obliterating the layers underneath. I use a lot of different techniques to create the look I like, such as stamping, gel plate printing, scraping, splashing, spraying, and stenciling. I cover up layers and then wipe the fresh paint away to reveal them again. I scratch into fresh paint, reintroduce areas of white with thick, opaque paint, stain with inks, and never fall in love with any one look until something in me says, "It's finished, don't touch it again." Sometimes, I ignore that voice.

~What You'll Do:

You must be brave.

You cannot make any mistakes, here. That's really the key. Stop looking at your work and thinking, "It sucks, look at all the mistakes!"

Try everything.

Try everything again.

Try everything again in another color palette.

Stamp.

Smear with your fingers.

Monoprint with a gel plate or a piece of plastic.

Scrape.

Walk away and drink some coffee.

Scribble your most personal thoughts into the wet paint.

Wipe it all away with a damp cloth.

Layer, layer, layer.

The biggest sin is to give up too soon.

Be unafraid to push through the ugly phases- and there will be ugly phases, count on it.

Listen to your instincts, and...

Paint, paint, paint.

I'll show you some steps in the progression of this particular piece. There were many more steps I didn't stop to photograph!

I usually start with my lightest and brightest colors, first. This will be your only opportunity to lay down a layer of pure yellow, or pure magenta. Later on, these colors- laying on top of other layers- will be influenced by the colors beneath.

I'm not concerned with composition, yet. I'm only creating an underpainting that will inform all the other layers. I've stamped using some of my own hand-carved stamps, and wiped paint away with a damp baby wipe. I've also scraped through fresh paint, immediately laid the waxy side of a piece of deli paper on top of it, burnished it lightly with my hand, peeled it away, and laid the deli paper- paint side down- onto another area of the painting, burnishing again. This easily transfers not only the paint but an interesting texture.

I'm just getting warmed up.

Next, I introduce complimentary colors... blues and blue-greens. I stamp, rub, scrape, monoprint, drink coffee, cover up ugly bits, make more ugly bits, cover those up, get up and walk away for an hour, come back and paint again. And then I reintroduce some white. Why? Because I like the contrast and it helps pop my bright color palette.

Then I obliterate those layers and create new ones.

I turn the cradleboard as I work, always gaining a new perspective. And I layer. And obliterate, allowing only a little of what's underneath peek though to create mystery and depth.

I start to consider composition and define it.

I bring back some of the magenta, add more stamping and brush work. And finally I decide that I'm ready to move onto a layer of monoprinted Stacked Journaling in black.

And don't neglect the sides of your cradleboard, either, they deserve paint as well! Here, I squeezed a small amount of one color I was working with onto a soft sponge and then just buffed the color into the raw wood of the cradleboard.

Monoprinting Stacked Journaling (and then modifying it)

Yep, that's a long name and I should probably come up with some catchy phrase for it that rolls off the tongue easily, but I struggle just to name my completed artworks, you can't expect me to invent pithy titles for techniques, too! Dangit, Jim, I'm an artist, not a writer!

So let's briefly tackle each element of this technique individually. Stacked Journaling is a method I devised for getting my own personal and unique mark making into my work using my handwriting. It involves free-association journaling without any punctuation while smooshing all the words and each individual sentence together, turning the paper 45 degrees, and doing it again. A block of Stacked Journaling looks like this...

... and a full tutorial for it can be found here. The beauty of the technique is that it looks completely different when someone else does it using their own unique handwriting. And if you're a calligrapher, you can use all kinds of beautiful script to create it. It allows you to express yourself openly and honestly in your work, while still maintaining a measure of your privacy because it can't actually be read, and for that reason it's an excellent therapy tool. It makes a great background image or can be used in small doses for emphasis.

A really fun way of using the technique is to monoprint it. Monoprinting is a technique in which you use inks and/or paints on a non-stick surface to create an image and then transfer that image to a sheet of paper, a piece of fabric, a sketchbook page, etc.

When I'm monoprinting Stacked Journaling, I use a squeeze bottle filled with paint as if it was a writing instrument, like this:

Next, I place another piece of paper (fabric, canvas, book page, whatever) on top...

...and burnish lightly with my hand.

Then I peel the sheets of paper apart to reveal the monoprint.

As you can see, the monoprinted Stacked Journaling creates a whole other dimension to your mark-making, further obliterating the actual message in favor of creating a mysterious and intriguing texture.

How do we apply this technique to our painted cradleboard? Glad you asked!

~What You Need:

Squeeze bottle with narrow tip. To achieve a thicker line of paint, remove the metal tip, which restricts to paint flow. To achieve a thin line of paint, use one of the metal tips. The tips come in .5mm, .7mm, and .9mm.

Plastic sheeting. I use stuff that comes off a roll from my big box hardware store (see link) but a plastic bag or sheet protector will do, as well.

Medium or thick paint color of your choice (I'm using black because I like the contrast.) Fluid acrylics won't work for this step as they are too liquid!

Water, transparent fluid medium, or some other acrylic paint thinner. Water works just fine as long as you don't add so much that your paint no longer adheres to your surface.

Cut a piece of plastic to size, making sure you have about three inches excess on all sides of your cradleboard.

Using a sharpie, create a template by tracing around your cradleboard, giving yourself about a 1 inch allowance. This will be the space within which you'll create your stacked journaling.

Fill your squeeze bottle to about one inch with your paint. Thin as needed to get a consistency that will flow easily without running. You want your paint to maintain a solid line.

Hold your squeeze bottle as if it were a pencil and begin writing, keeping the pressure steady and making sure to start outside the lines you've drawn on your template. Leave out punctuation and spaces between words and sentences. Use some flourish with your handwriting to create a curvy, over-the-top look. Allow your letters and your rows of journaling to overlap slightly.

Fill the template with journaling and then turn the plastic sheeting 45 degrees and journal on top of the previous layer.

Once you have two layers filling the inside of your template, with a little bit of the writing falling outside the lines you drew with your sharpie marker, it's time to transfer the journaling to your painted cradleboard. You can do this in two ways: 1) carefully lift the plastic sheeting and place it onto the cradleboard, paint side down, being sure to center it properly. Gently pat your hands across the surface, pressing the painted journaling onto your cradleboard. OR 2) Invert your cradleboard over onto the Stacked Journaling like this:

(I like using this method because the plastic can get wiggly and fold in on itself, and also because it can be difficult to center the plastic onto the piece of art. It also allows you to gently fold and burnish the plastic up along the edges of the cradleboard, giving your Journaling a seamless look that starts on the surface of your painting and cascades over the edges.)

Holding the plastic sheeting, carefully flip the piece right side up and peel away the plastic.

Remove the plastic slowly and if you don't feel that you've gotten enough of the journaling to transfer to the painting, lay the plastic back down and gently pat with your hands. Try not to rub the plastic, which can smear the paint. When you're satisfied, remove the plastic completely.

Allow this layer to dry completely.

To keep from wasting paint and the neat SJ you've just created, you can lay paper down on top of the sheeting and, using the same gentle patting you preformed on your artwork, take "ghost prints".

You'll wind up with the start of some neat collage sheets, backgrounds, journal pages, or your next art piece!

To reuse the plastic again for another project, immediately rinse in water until the paint is gone and then hang dry.

Modifying Stacked Journaling

You can leave the piece as is, or if you like, you can really make your Stacked Journaling pop even more by modifying it with a white paint marker. Zentanglers and doodlers will probably love this step!